By Tara Bahrampour and Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 28, 2008

TBILISI, Georgia, Aug. 27 -- A U.S. military ship dropped off the first sea shipment of aid at a Georgian port Wednesday, avoiding one that remains under Russian control.

The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Dallas dropped off 76,000 pounds of supplies in Batumi, in southern Georgia. The delivery was initially scheduled to be made at the Black Sea port of Poti, a town in undisputed Georgian territory where Russian soldiers are stationed and the Russian military sank two ships this month, Georgian officials said.

The ship arrived as Georgia downgraded its diplomatic relations with Russia, a day after Russia officially recognized Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. The diplomatic moves came nearly three weeks after Georgia and Russia went to war over South Ossetia.

The secretary of Georgia's National Security Council, Alexander Lomaia, said relations could be completely cut by the end of the week. On Wednesday, Georgia gave the Russian ambassador 10 days to leave the country and announced it would reduce its diplomatic staff in Moscow to two people, he said. Georgia recalled its ambassador to Russia in July.

Georgian officials also announced Wednesday that South Ossetian authorities had released 85 Georgian civilians who had been held in the territory's capital, Tskhinvali. At least 12 Georgian servicemen are still being held by Russia since their arrest in Poti on Aug. 20, Lomaia said, adding that their detention went against an agreement to exchange prisoners of war.

Georgia's first deputy defense minister, Batu Kutelia, said the Georgian government had advised the United States against sending a ship to Poti because of damage there. Lomaia added that the United States had consulted with Georgia and switched the ship's destination in order "not to fuel the tensions" with Russia.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman said the boat had changed its destination, then retracted that statement, the Associated Press reported. The embassy would not comment on the retraction.

"We don't forecast the ports our ships are going to be pulling into," said Cmdr. Scott Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 6th Fleet, in Naples. "Throughout the mission, we've been considering all our options."

Georgia's prime minister said Wednesday that the war had caused about $1 billion in damage.

As the Dallas delivered its supplies, a squadron of Russian warships led by the missile cruiser Moskva arrived at the Abkhaz port of Sukhumi to the north, the Interfax news agency reported.

"The ships are performing duties on maintaining peace and stability in Abkhazia and in the republic's territorial waters," Vice Adm. Sergei Menyailo was quoted as saying. "Among the duties we are performing is control over Abkhazia's territorial waters and the prevention of the trafficking in arms. We are also carrying out a humanitarian mission."

A U.S. naval command ship is scheduled to arrive later this month with more supplies, and Navy transport planes have been flying daily airlifts into Tbilisi, Georgia's capital.

Four ships under NATO command, including the USS Taylor, are conducting scheduled exercises in the Black Sea with the Romanian and Bulgarian navies.

A senior Russian military official accused NATO nations of "ratcheting up tension" in the Black Sea but said Russia was not planning to add to its fleet there. "Now we have people flexing their muscles, demonstrating force," Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian general staff, said at a news briefing in Moscow.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko joined Western nations Wednesday in condemning Russia's recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and said his government might increase Russia's rent on its Sevastopol base, headquarters of the Russian Black Sea fleet. Russia has said any renegotiation would break a 1997 agreement between the two countries under which it currently leases the base for $98 million a year until 2017.

Kutelia said that the civilian and military ports at Poti were under Georgian control but that the Russians had established checkpoints around them. Asked about reports that the Russian army could soon begin examining shipments that pass through Poti, he said, "They will not have such crazy and irresponsible ideas," and added, "We will not let them."

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, denied that Russian troops were in Poti, saying they were in "a nearby territory."

Pan reported from Moscow. Correspondent Jonathan Finer in Tbilisi contributed to this report.